As the online streaming of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football games moves from Twitter to Amazon this year, CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said he doesn’t expect the retail giant to pry any ratings points away from his broadcast audience and that its involvement “can be a positive if it’s attracting a younger audience” and “promoting football to a different fan base.”
Still, McManus and his team are aware of the multiples of billions in Amazon’s coffers even if it’s unclear how far into sports media rights the commerce company plans to go. Down the road, McManus said, “I think they’ll be competitors.”
For now, however, Amazon will live-stream 11 games this season, simulcasting the CBS or NBC feed for its Prime subscribers. (CBS is broadcasting five games while NBC has six games, including a Christmas Day game on a Monday.) Amazon’s slate of games begins with Week 4’s matchup of the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers on Sept. 28, the first of five straight on CBS with five NBC games airing between Nov. 9 and Dec. 14 before the Christmas game. All 11 games on Amazon will also be aired by a third provider, NFL Network, for a network-cable-online trifecta.
Amazon has begun making significant investment in the sports media space with a reported outlay of $50 million for the 10 Thursday night games, a fivefold increase on Twitter’s $10 million expenditure on last fall’s inventory. (It is a pittance, however, compared to the $450 million CBS and NBC are each spending per season for Thursday Night Football games.) Amazon also recently was undergoing a tender process to stream the ATP World Tour in the United Kingdom, which includes all men’s matches except for the four grand slam tournaments, although the French Open was included in a separate partnership in the U.K. that will also include streaming broadcasts of the Tour de France and Olympic Games.
CBS sideline reporter Jamie Erdahl said the NFL streaming feed is a great supplementary tool because it allows fans not to miss any action. Last year, for instance, she was out watching the first half of the games with friends, took a taxi home in which she streamed the third quarter and then put the game back on TV in her apartment. As such, she views streaming not as competition but as an enhancement.
“I think it’s a great way for the NFL, regardless of whether it’s Twitter or Amazon, to be experimenting because this is the way we are going,” Erdahl said. “People are consuming not only sports but every form of media digitally. I think it’s something that’s good to embrace.”
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Part of the interesting experiment for this season is that the games are not being broadcast on a social media site like Twitter, where fans might already be logging on for extra insights and updates, but on Amazon which isn’t the same sort of information-sharing platform.
“I think Amazon will be interesting because, when you sit on a couch and you’re watching TV, you can really just turn to Channel 2 [or other local affiliate],” CBS’ top sideline reporter, Tracy Wolfson, said. “You still have to turn on Amazon. I think it will be interesting to see how many inside the house actually turn on Amazon, but I think from your phone, more and more people are out. They’ve got lives, they’ve got things to do, they’ve got families, they’ve got kids, and they still need a way to watch the NFL, which of course is one of the most consumed products out there.”
What remains to be seen is how much football fans will opt for a streaming broadcast over a traditional big-screen television experience, as networks like CBS and NBC can still be viewed by cord-cutters over an antenna for free or through skinny streaming bundles.
“I’m not concerned with sports fans dropping CBS because they can’t afford to do so,” McManus said, noting that his network also broadcasts the NCAA tournament, the Masters and major college football games, among other offerings in addition to the NFL.
Twitter reported to its shareholders that last year’s games drew an average of 3.5 million unique viewers per game with 55 percent under the age of 25, an indication of the strong demographic metrics most advertisers covet. Recently retired wide receiver Nate Burleson, a new addition to CBS’ pregame show, called online streaming “great thing” for the sport.
“How do you get in front of the milennials?” he said. “You have to get [on] whatever they have in their hand, and you have to do it in a way that doesn’t turn them off.”
Even the older guard has come around. Longtime quarterback Phil Simms, who is moving from the broadcast booth to the studio this fall, likened streaming to the advent of fantasy football. At first, he was opposed but came around when he understood the greater impact it was having.
“When I was doing it last year, [I was] going, ‘Why do they want to pull an audience away from us?’” said Simms, who was part of the Thursday night crew. “But, then I realized it doesn’t. I’m for whatever it takes to keep growing the game because we’re part of it.”
Simms then joked he was mad about not having any Amazon stock.
— Jen Booton contributed reporting to this story.